Representative Joe Straus will return to his role as House Speaker after a landslide win over Representative Scott Turner.

Turner has worked over the past year to curry favor with conservatives in order to unseat Rep. Straus as Speaker. It was a campaign that led Straus to make veiled comments about Turner’s efforts to turn fellow Republicans against him in the vote for Speaker.

“Leading up to this day, a small number sought to divide us with misleading and personal attacks,” Straus said after being sworn in as Speaker. “But you can not effectively govern this House by dividing it.”

Straus garnered 127 votes over Turner’s 19. This is the first time since 1975 that the House has held a contested vote for the Speaker of the House.

On Sunday during PBS NewsHour, our KLRU News Brief is part of American Graduate. We spoke to our partners at E3 Alliance about new data, which shows improves rates of retention among Central Texas 9th graders.

The surge in retention between 9th and 10th grade is often referred to as a bubble. That means there is a jump in the amount of students held back compared to other school years. If students don’t get enough credits to move up with their class to 10th grade, they’re still considered 9th graders.

“We’ve seen a drop of about half of the retention rate in the last few years, and that’s incredibly important, because we’ve found those students that are retained in the 9th grade are 8 ½ times more likely to drop out as their peers who weren’t retained in 9th grade,” E3 Executive Director Susan Dawson told us.

We visited Eastside Memorial High School for E3′s data unveiling and spoke with two students about their experiences in school. Both said there are many factors holding back some of their peers.

“Some of the challenges would be like, families. Some parents have to work so kids have to stay home and watch the younger brothers and sisters, or they have work after school and get home and go to sleep to get up the next morning,” Eastside Memorial High School Junior Isaac Reyes told us. “I know some kids have dropped out, not because of work or family things, but like, they don’t see why they should have to come to school when it doesn’t relate to what they want to do. They don’t see the point in taking all these extra classes.”

Proponents of the recently enacted House Bill 5 say the students Isaac describes are exactly the ones the new graduation plan is designed to reach.

KLRU News Briefs air locally during PBS NewsHour Weekend, Saturday and Sunday at 6:30pm. Do you have an American Graduate story idea? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at CivicSummit@klru.org, post a comment, or tweet at us using #amgradtx.

On Saturday during PBS NewsHour we hear about Austin’s growing Muslim population. Muslims around the world marked the end of Ramadan this week with Eid al-Fitr. Thousands of worshipers gathered at the North Austin Event Center on Monday to pray and listen to a sermon. It was a huge turnout for the growing community in Austin, and next year organizers are planning to move to an even bigger venue.

“Every year is more than we can handle,” Imam Islam Mossaad of the North Austin Community Center said Monday.

Imam Islam said that growth comes from immigrants from all over the world, as well as new converts.

“Muslims [are] spread out throughout the rest of the world, 1.5 billion Muslims, [and] in Austin that diversity is reflected. But also with the added touch of people who are Caucasian-American or African-American or Latino-American who are also coming into Islam,” Imam Islam said. “You have more than 80 different countries represented here today, probably more than that, but we are all also Americans at the same time and so we practice our faith here freely.”

On Sunday, our story is about Austin’s first ever farm school, opening this fall. Farmer Starter grew out of Farmshare Austin, a non-profit focused on educating Central Texans about farming and increasing access to organic, locally-grown food.

“It’s a very challenging business and this is a kind of challenging environment to do it in but we feel that local organic food is a human right and that people should have access to that kind of product and so we want to make sure that it’s widely available in our community,” Farmshare Austin Executive Director Taylor Cook said.

Enrolled students will live and work on the Farmer Starter farm, 10 miles east of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, for six months. They will learn seed starting, harvesting, marketing, as well as financial and business planning, among other skills.

Farmshare Austin is currently trying to raise $50,000 in an Indiegogo campaign to fund construction and student scholarships. You can learn more about the school on their website.

KLRU NewsBriefs air locally on Saturday and Sunday during PBS NewsHour Weekend starting at 6:30pm.

This weekend during PBS NewsHour we talk to the E3 Alliance about their 2014 Central Texas Education Profile, an in-depth report of educational data covering trends and outcomes for the entire Central Texas region.

On Saturday, we talk to Susan Dawson, Executive Director of E3.

“We use [the data] to inform the community and inform better decision making around education, whether it’s for superintendents and school districts, business and community leaders, for nonprofits who work in the education space, policy makers, all of us throughout the region have different pieces of impact on the education space and it’s to inform that impact through objective data,” Dawson said.

Dawson told us Central Texas is unique because of the area’s rapid growth. Texas has the fastest growing student population of all 50 states in the country and Central Texas’ student population is growing at twice the state’s rate, and of that growth, low income students and English Language Learners are growing at twice that rate.

“So the students who we’re working hardest to help succeed are growing at twice the rate of the region which is already twice the rate of the fastest growing state in the entire country,” Dawson emphasized.

On Sunday, we talk to E3′s Director of Policy and Research, Shawn Thomas. Thomas explained some of this year’s findings regarding our region’s dropout rate.

“For the last decade, we’ve seen that our graduation rates for low income students were lower than graduation rates for low income students in the other urban areas across the state including Houston, Dallas, El Paso and San Antonio. But, this year we saw that change for the first time with our 2012 graduation rates,” Thomas said. “We do know that there’s a very strong relationship between attendance and graduation rates and we know that attendance patterns in our region have changed over the past few years as well.”

You can see the entire E3 Alliance Central Texas Education Profile on the organization’s website.

KLRU News Briefs air locally on Saturday and Sunday during PBS NewsHour Weekend starting at 6:30pm.

By now you’ve probably heard the news: Austin voters will elect 10 council members in November from 10 new geographic districts. They’ll also elect a new mayor, the only person on the dais tasked with governing the city as a whole. KLRU and the Austin Urban Land Institute are excited to announce we will host one of the first mayoral debates of the election cycle, just days after filing closes, moderated by Jennifer Stayton of KUT News.

During Civic Summit: Mayoral Candidate Forum we’ll hear each candidate’s plan to move Austin forward and find out how each will navigate a new council structure with 10 distinct points of view.

To participate in the forum candidates must have officially filed all of the necessary paperwork required to appear on the ballot. Each candidate must also show evidence of a campaign. That includes, but is not limited to, distribution of volunteers and contributors, presence of a headquarters, campaign staff, and campaign appearances. Candidacy must also be significant, meaning the candidate can demonstrate voter interest and support either in the form of independent and reliable polling or media coverage.

The forum will take place in KLRU’s Studio 6A on August 27 starting at 7pm and will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30pm. An RSVP link will be coming soon. The forum will be broadcast on KLRU the following evening, Thursday, August 28 at 8pm.

This weekend during PBS NewsHour we partnered with The Texas Tribune to bring you part of their investigation Hurting for Work. You can see extended versions of these stories and other stories in the investigation here.

On Saturday, Texas Tribune Multimedia Reporter Alana Rocha tells the story of Santiago Arias. In 2006 Arias fell two stories to the ground while working for a contractor in Houston. He now has no feeling from the chest down. He only remembers waking up in the hospital.

“I could hear [people in the hospital], but I couldn’t express anything. I could hear them say I was quadriplegic, but I didn’t know what that was,” Arias said.

His employer did not carry workers’ compensation insurance. Texas is the only state in the country that doesn’t require employers to provide coverage.

On Sunday, part two of the Tribune investigation focuses on Crystal Davis. Davis’ husband, Wayne Davis, died while traveling from their home to a Burger King franchise. He worked as a sales, profit and operations coach for Burger King and was among the 81 percent of Texas workers covered by worker’s compensation insurance.

Davis had to fight to receive payments from the insurance company, which claimed her husband was not working when he died. Just days after The Texas Tribune’s reporting of Davis’ case, the insurance company dropped their lawsuit against Davis and her two children.

This weekend during PBS NewsHour we have two different indoor activities you can check out: the Harry Ransom Center’s WWI exhibit and the South Austin Pop Culture Center.

On Saturday we peak inside SouthPop, a non-profit museum dedicated to preserving Austin’s music history and the art surrounding that industry. SouthPop’s director Leea Mechling told us this history is more important for residents to know than ever.

“This place is important to give context of Austin’s culture to people who have lived here for a long time and for people who have just moved here. The era of the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s was really a building time of Austin’s unique culture,” Mechling said.

SouthPop is celebrating 10 years this Summer. It is located on South Lamar and is open Thursday through Sunday 1 – 6pm.

Our Sunday story takes you inside the Harry Ransom Center on the University of Texas campus. To commemorate the centennial of the start of World War I, the museum is presenting The World at War: 1914-1918. Some might be surprised to hear about an historical exhibit at the Ransom Center, and curator Jean Cannon said that’s what makes their exhibit unique.

“We have great holdings for literature so a lot of the items that you’ll see in the gallery are diaries or letters and items that give a very personal moment of living between 1914 and 1918,” Cannon told us.

The exhibit runs through August 3. The Harry Ransom Center is free and open to the public.

KLRU NewsBriefs air locally during PBS NewsHour Weekend, Saturday and Sunday at 6:30pm.

This Sunday during PBS NewsHour Weekend we’ll preview a Central Texas Gardener story about an East Austin company offering a fossil fuel-free way to compost.

Since 2012, East Side Compost Pedallers has cycled through 5 neighborhoods to collect residential and commercial compostables. Residential customers pay $4 a week, each opting to spare the landfill and instead nourish their neighborhood farms and urban microgrowers.

East Side Pies pays the Compost Pedallers to pick up their vegetable scraps. They say they’ve even attracted more customers as a result.

“We have a lot of vegetable scrap and instead of it going into a dumpster it goes back into soil and our local community and gets more food for everybody. The fact that we’re taking several hundred pounds of waste out of the landfill I think more than makes up for the small cost that we pay,” Randall Holt of East Side Pies told us.

East Side Compost Pedallers recently won the Austin Green Business Leaders Communication and Outreach award.

KLRU NewsBriefs air locally during PBS NewsHour Weekend. An extended version of “Will Pedal for Compost” will air during Central Texas Gardener on July 12 at noon.

This weekend during PBS NewsHour we have two East Austin education stories.

On Saturday, we’ll introduce you to one of Austin’s newest charter schools and the city’s only public Montessori school: Magnolia Montessori for All. Founder and Principal Sara Cotner told KLRU about why she chose to locate the school in East Austin.

“In Austin there are more than 20 Montessori schools and they’re all private and they’re all west of I-35. East Austin is this beautiful opportunity where there’s a lot of diversity, a lot of different kinds of families, a rich history of commitment to the community,” Ms. Cotner said. “We feel really honored that we were able to find land that was available here and connect with families who were really interested in this vision.”

The school opens August 4th with 3-year-olds through 3rd graders in portable classrooms. They plan to add a grade level every year through 8th grade. Construction is still underway at the site.

On Sunday, we’ll air our conversation with Ada Anderson, an Austin Civil Rights pioneer who donated $3 million this week to Huston-Tillotson University – the largest gift the school has ever received. The funds will be used to build the Sandra Joy Anderson Community Health and Wellness Center (pictured above), a facility which will serve students and surrounding residents. It is named for Mrs. Anderson’s daughter.

“We all know more and more the need for mental health and the plans for the building just fit so perfectly to what [my daughter and her husband] did,” Mrs. Anderson told us. “There are a lot of people [in East Austin] who don’t have a lot of money who I think will be served there so that’s one of the really exciting things to me.”

HT tells us work will begin on the new building very soon.

These stories air on KLRU at 6:30 on Saturday and Sunday evening during PBS NewsHour Weekend.